Principles and Rules for Section → Execution Scorecard
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| Execution Making-it-Happen -
Discipline of Execution → 'Executable' Strategy → Focus & Money-Machine → 'Value' management → 'Capabilities' management → Execution Intensity → Human Capital → Resilience & Flexibility → Anticipation & Intelligence → Execution Scorecard → Leadership & Work-Discipline → Entraprenurial Execution → |
| Enterprise Intelligence -
BI End-to-End → Data Quality → Data-Warehouse/Mart → Data Analysis/OLAP → Metadata Management → |
| Functional Management -
Customer Management → Sales & Distribution → |
| Vendor- IT Tool Domain -
Vendor-tool Evaluation → BI End User Tools → BI platform Tools → Data Management Tools → |
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Don't give business class service on economy class rates
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Customer loyalty can harm the share-holder interest, if you try to spend more than the value which a customer is bringing in. The concept of 'long-term' value of a customer is gradually becoming redundant apart from few sectors like life insurance.
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Single point vendor management is good only if cost-effective
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Many large companies outsource their global or regional services to a single vendor to avoid internal management overhead or band--width. However, they may end up paying too much premium for this single point service, and end up loosing the benefit of local rates.
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Minimize groceries expense and add to utensils
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As a fundamental rule of expense management, your expenses to 'keep the lights on' should go down every year, so that you can invest into new capabilities
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Scrutinize the good performance as intensely as bad performance
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If business performance is doing visibly better than expected, its as much a reason to investigate and analyze, as you would if the performance is not up to the mark. One of the reasons for economic downturn in 2008 is that organizations did not scrutinize well-enough, when sales people were booking too many mortgages too fast.
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Optimize your cash break-even
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Protecting cash and maintaining the reliability of your funds-flow is core to sustainable results. Ability to change your operational models, installed capacities, vendor-matrix etc.. Adds to your 'execution capacity index'. An operating model, which optimizes your cash-breakeven is important for future flexibility. This does not mean that you have to 'minimize' your cash-breakeven. Beyond a certain point, you end up paying pounds in future to save pennies now.
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You may have to give-up your upside to protect your downside
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A leader needs to maintain a right balance between the speed and safety
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Try to Minimize personal intuition out of your early-your warning systems
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No one can replace the need for human intuition, judgment, impression, anticipation and gut-feel. However, it get counter-productive when we rely only upon these 'personal' capabilities or try to calibrate our early warning systems to confirm the gut-feel of a CEO. The early warning or risk-anticipation systems should be neutral and form the key basis to start preparing for contingencies
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Build your capability for short shelf-life of strategy and business-model
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In today's era of economic uncertainty, strategy is no longer the back-drop of execution. Execution is not only implementing the strategy well, but also to be able to change the strategy, much before it fails.
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No management intensity is sustainable if it takes more than 10 minutes to know what and where to focus
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Management intensity is the depth, width and frequency with which we manage our business. However, if higher management intensity means greater time spent, it may not be sustainable. The information pipelines providing all what you need to know (and when you need to know) should be simple and flexible enough so that you question on 'what and why?' are answered in less than ten minutes
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No information pipeline is sustainable, if there is one-way flow
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Information is not only needed by the senior leaders to manage their business. It is equally needed by the 'bread-earners' at the ground level. If your information pipes are asking your ground level personnel to provide the data, and not give rich information back to them, the information pipeline will not sustainable. You cannot expect people to work on giving the information without seeing any benefit in doing the same. As a result, the information flow will become inconsistent and unreliable over time.
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Management intensity goes hand in hand with Sharpness of senses
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If you are working a twice the speed, your level of alertness and ability to comprehend your environment has to be equally scaled-up.
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Calibrate your management intensity as per the assumptions and results at risk
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There is no standard on how intense your management should be. It needs to be scaled based on which aspect of business is under risk or is under focus.
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Pay equal emphasis on your balance sheet as on your P&L
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Typical performance scorecards are focusing on Profit &Loss, Topline and Bottom-line. Most of the Quarter by Quarter 'street' reporting is around P&L factors. One needs to define factors related to assets, cash, liquidity, debt leverage etc..to ensure that we are also tracking the true financial strength.
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Business Contingency Plan needs to have a different meaning
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Typical definition of 'Business Contingency Plan (BCP) is the preparedness to continue company operations 'keeping the lights on', in the face of a disaster or calamity. However, if we go by the true meaning, it should be to continue achieving results in the light of changing environment.
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True empowerment comes with feedback and control loop
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Empowerment and Control are not 'Either-OR'. Sometimes organizations pendulate between an empowered vs. controlled organization. An execution friendly organization will have a well-coupled structure of empowerment with a continuous feedback loop, which enables it to fine-tune its level of empowerment and control.
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Managing by numbers does not complete the picture
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World is more complex than '2+2=4'. Your Execution Scorecard will not only have numbers, but also commentary, qualitative customer/competition information, future expectations and other qualitative information which will truly complete the picture for you
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Move goals from 'Completion to Benefits'
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What defines execution?- completion of tasks and projects or generating value to achieve expected business results
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If most of your actions are going beyond next review cycle, something is wrong
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If you have a monthly review cycle, and most of the actions identified in a review session cannot be completed within next one month, something is amiss
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You can drive your car when you are watching next 100 meters 90% of the time
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A leader with high execution-quotient will be spending 10% of time in understanding what and why of the current state, and 90 % of his time on thinking on 'what can be done better, faster, cheaper?', and 'what is expected to happen?'
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Have your decision trees worked out, for efficient management intensity
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Higher management intensity does not mean more time being spent in performance reviews and decisioning. With proper mechanisms for reporting 'what is happening?' and 'why is it happening?', and your pre-designed thoughts on what decision you will take in which scenario and exception can make your 'intense management' fast and easy.
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You can have a high management intensity, only with good information pipelines
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Having consistent and reliable information forms a key pillar for high management intensity. You need to the get the data on efficiency, productivity and how it is linked to the output. More is the management intensity, 'faster, wider and longer' need to be the information pipelines
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Granular information is must, even if you do not need to see it for day-to-day
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A manager may not need to go beyond two levels of details to understand on how his team is doing. However, he should have level 3 and 4 information available. This is critical for a manager to do an ad-hoc check on what is truly happening on the ground, get some more ideas on how to measure the business, do on-spot investigation and analysis. This is also part of creating a 'filter-free information pipeline'
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Information needs definition should start from asking right management questions
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A good practice to gather business information requirement is, not to state what information is needed, but what are the business questions, we want to get answered. Once these business questions are listed out, you will define the detailed information needs which will satisfy these questions
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Think of not only what information you need but also why you need it
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If you need a business information, you also need to document on why you need that information?, what will you do with it? and what actions or decisions are going to be driven by it?. This will provide a better clarity on how do you want to manage your business, and it will also ensure that you will use the information, when it is provided to you.
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There is a difference between the employee and the performance
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As a best HR practice, one should differentiate between the employee and his/her performance. An employee's performance is impacted not only by employee's inherent capabilities and attitude, but also on working conditions, training, leadership support, better KRA management etc...A significant proportion of how an employee performs is driven by the factors which can be changed.
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Performance Review Session should have no surprises
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A structured performance review session should be typically a place to focus on decisions, agreements, and next-steps. The current state of 'What is happening?', should be typically available online and the stakeholder do not need to wait for the performance review session for the same.
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Execution Blue-print should ensure plan change readiness and flexibility
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Execution-Blue Print for a business plan will not only cover the details of making the plan happen, but also how to maintain the flexibility change the plan & strategy if the business assumptions do not stand-out
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360 degrees execution blue-print- Finance, Business, Process, IT, Capabilities and Assumptions
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Just like a 360 degree 'Execution Scorecard', the 'Execution Blue-Print' will be including all facets of 'Making it happen'. This will include financial targets, business targets, capability building plan, assumption tracking, how to be ready to change your business model in case of assumptions not bearing out in reality etc..
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Higher capabilities does not necessarily mean higher cost or automation
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Having robust and reliable 'capabilities' is not synonymous with automation and additional investments. Secondly having more automation may not give you an equivalent jump in capabilities.
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Capability scorecard should be reviewed as diligently as Performance Scorecard
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Performance scorecard helps you measure the 'performance', capability scorecard helps you measure the 'sustainability of performance'. An organization needs to track both (among others).
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Dangerous words- Mostly, Most probably, almost, That Day
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Any Execution-focused leader is allergic to the words, which are non-committal. To improve day-to-day execution-quotient, take-away these words out of the work-dictionary
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If you are going to jump high, ensure that you have a safety net
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Organization may fall into the 'Binary trap'- When they are growing they are too busy to build safety nets. When they are falling, its too late. Secondly, when they are falling, they stop preparing for the next jump
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Add Live to SMART goals
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SMART is an oft-used term to define the quality of goal-setting. Given the era of economic uncertainty, one needs to add some more dimensions in making quality definition of goals. One such dimension is to make the goals LIVE. This means that your SMART goals should be changed/revised in real-time as your environment and assumptions change.
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Take your time in communicating on 'what's different'
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If your employee is expected to change his/her roles/ behavior/ focus/ priorities because you are revising your strategy or re-positioning your business, take adequate time to explain.
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Financial worksheets and Q by Q allocation and cascading goal-sheet will not assure execution
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An Execution Blue-print goes beyond the typical components of business plan. It looks at all what could go wrong/change and ensures that one is ready to respond. It includes detailing of not only what one needs to do to fulfill the business plan, but also how to build capabilities for long-term sustainable results.
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An Execution Blue-Print should be the source of end-to-end Execution Management
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Business needs to create a detailed blue-print on how it will 'execute' the strategy and this execution blue-print should be containing all what one needs to make it happen. This blue-print goes much beyond the financial worksheets and quarterly/monthly targets
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Both 'What you should?' and 'What you should not?'
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As you cascade and communicate the strategy (or/and changes therein), one has to be crisp in terms of what changes for an employee. This should include what an employee should Continue Doing, Stop Doing, Start Doing and Do Differently.
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Both Input and Output are critical for 'Real' performance Management
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The performance which is measured on the outcome/final results, can be fairly execution-unfriendly. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, the reviewer and the reviewee do not have the basis of understanding 'why' of the results in terms of efficiency or productivity. Secondly, it does not help in finding the corrective actions around the effort and 'smartness' of effort.
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Move ahead of PTD (Past to date) to FTD (Future To date)
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An 'Execution Scorecard' will not only have MTD/YTD figures (as most 'performance scorecards' are limited to looking at the past), but also the expected results (effort as well as outcome), with detailed commentary on risk, mitigation and help-items
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Business scorecard needs to be the sub-set of the employee scorecards
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If your business scorecard contains a metric which is not present in the employee goal/KRA sheet, something is amiss
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Have a quarterly employee formal performance review
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Most organizations have yearly employee performance review cycles and quarterly/monthly business review cycle. This is a big mis-match. An employee performance needs to be reviewed in tandem with the frequency of business review. Every business review includes changes in the targets, assumptions etc, and the same needs to be reflected in employees goals
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Risk to assumptions is more important than risk to performance
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A business needs to track the assumptions it made in business planning more closely than its performance. The key reason is that while one may be able to change one's performance, most business assumptions are uncontrollable and earlier one knows that deviations in the assumptions, faster one can work on responding to the same
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Do periodic next to next level assessment
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This is the age of interdependencies and you could succeed or fail in business more due to what is happening outside of your organization, than what is happening inside. A smart organization will not only track on what is happening with their customers, but also their customer's customers. Similarly, it will also track its vendor's vendors, financier's financiers etc...
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Task/goal has to have date, checkpoints, update time, completion criteria and exception reporting
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When you are defining a task or a goal, it needs to have all the imperatives so that a task can be managed in a tight manner. This goes beyond 'SMART' goals
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Any call or meeting of more than 30 minutes need to be questioned
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On the same lines as spending time in small denominations, the meeting time, has to well guarded. The meeting discussions expand to occupy the time available. As a general rule, operational meetings should be 'standing meetings' and range between 15-30 minutes
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If you are working for more than 9 hours, you are compromising on the productivity
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A human body and mind cannot have sustained and high productivity in 50+/60/70 hour weeks. When we place an outer limit on our working hours and maintain a sharp focus on using our time well, a lot can be achieved in less than 50 hour week
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Any tool, which takes more than 15 minutes to tell 'what and why?' will not work
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Your information management tools, data pipelines, analytics and reporting should be simple and focused. People are too busy in their work. The information published to them should be crisp and flexible enough for them to know 'what is happening and why is it happening?' in less than 15 minutes.
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Be ruthless on your operational expenses and diligent on your investments
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As a rule, the expenses to keep your lights on, should reduce year on year and the investment expense per unit of value should also go down year after year
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Increase your speed only if you can turn fast enough
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If you want to capture a market and want to open thousand branches in next two years, you also need to develop an execution quotient, where you can shut down at least half of the branches in six months. If you do not have a retraction readiness, you will be like an advancing army, which is burning the bridges behind it.
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Invest into new capacity, once you are certain of using 125% of existing capacity
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Make the best of what you have before you invest further. Investment cannot always be in small units and many a times organizations have to commit to future by investing into capacity expansion. However, in that case one has to phase out as much as possible, and have a cheaper exit strategy.
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